Panaya SAP Salary Survey 2011 - My Analysis of Trends and Skills

For the last two years, Panaya has been conducting salary surveys of SAP professionals. Since public data about SAP salary trends is hard to come by, these are worthwhile surveys to dig into. For their 2011 SAP salary survey (free with registration), Panaya interviewed more than 800 respondents, twice as many as in the 2010 version.

This year, Panaya also published an SAP salary survey infographic that visualizes the results, which you can check out on ERP Executive (I’m the Editor in Chief of ERP Executive, published by Panaya).

In this illustrated blog post, I will contrast some interesting data points between the 2010 and 2011 results, and offer my own take on some of the SAP salary and skills trends noted in the surveys.

One of the disappointing (though not surprising) realities of the two surveys is the gender discrepancy between the pay of men and women in the SAP field.

Here’s a look at the gender pay breakdown of the 2010 survey (430 survey respondents):

And here’s the 2011 gender pay results (812 survey respondents):

The two surveys had some differences in terms of median salaries, particularly at the high end. But looking at two years’ worth of data, we can more confidently say that gender pay discrepancy is a problem in the SAP world, specifically at the 10-year-plus experience level. I suspect that the problem here is less about SAP and more about the difficulties women face achieving higher levels of management within organizations. We know that SAP pay is largely impacted by management level, so this seems like a fair assumption, but one that warrants further research.

On another topic, there was some data in this year’s survey that indicated some improvements in SAP pay rates. In this year’s survey, 60% of the respondents reported an increase in their 2010 earnings compared to 2009. This is a big change from last year’s survey, when only 32% saw a salary increase. In addition, over half of the respondents (58%) received a bonus in 2010. The average bonus was 11% of total compensation.

Expectations can also tell a tale. In last year’s survey, half the respondents expected no change in their salary:

But in the 2011 survey results, 65% of respondents expected an increase in salary, with only 29% expecting their pay to remain the same:

We’ll have to wait until next year to find out if those expectations were accurate, but the results point to decent (though not dramatic) improvements in perceived SAP compensation amongst those surveyed.

When asked for tips about how to obtain a salary boost, the following suggestions were emphasized by survey respondents:

It’s hard to knock that list. Though I have yet to see any comprehensive studies connecting SAP certification to significant pay increases, investing in self-education, whether formal or informal, clearly has merit. I’d be curious to see if an MBA degree had impact on SAP pay increases. “Understand the business side” is critical; I would add to that: “Understand the opportunities for advancement.”

Depending on where you work in SAP (functional or technical), the advancement path is different. Not everyone is cut out to be a manager, but that’s where the higher average SAP salaries are. “Become proficient in more than one SAP version” also makes sense, though I’d add “become proficient in the most recent SAP version in your focus area.” Staying on top of SAP releases improves overall marketability.

The technology skills recommendations from the respondents is a mix of emerging (cloud) and classic (testing) SAP/IT capabilities:

The mix of emerging/classic skills on this list matches the most successful SAP consultants I’ve worked with. There’s a knack for keeping your skills on the edge while maintaining a solid core. When you get too far out on the edge, the jobs aren’t there yet. "Collaboration" is one of the more intruiging results that figured prominently on this list, and probably warrants a more precise definition. We can assume this has to do with more socialized tools to interact with co-workers on projects, but further surveys should flesh out the specifics here.

Finally, here’s a summary of some SAP skills recommendations from different types of SAP professionals who were surveyed:

I would have liked to see the developer and system admin skills recommendations broken out into two categories, but nothing I see here really surprises me. For example, Solution Manager is clearly an area to reckon with. Not every SAP customer is using SolMan heavily, but particularly for Basis admins, I can’t imagine not pursuing some SolMan expertise.

The emphasis on BusinessObjects/BI skills across the board was not a surprise, and definitely reflects the skills needs I hear about from colleagues and customers. In addition to being an important specialization, SAP BI is becoming an area that all SAP professionals should have in their toolkit. Data visualization, reporting, decision management – these are areas that are highly relevant to business users and quickly spreading to mobile devices. SAP's in-memory (HANA) pursuits will only reinforce these trends further. You can’t get in on the action without relevant BI skills.

ERP 6.0 upgrade skills are obviously valuable to have. I haven’t seen the amount of SAP upgrades this year I was expecting, or at least, the amount of SAP upgrade job orders. One explanation: companies are focused on streamlined technical upgrades. These types of upgrades don’t generate the same amount of job requirements as a broader functional upgrade would. I’d add another to this list: understanding Enhancement Pack functionality and implementation is becoming more relevant as more of the user base migrates to ERP 6.0.

There are more trends in the 2011 survey you may want to check out for yourself – one strength of the survey is the geographical comparisons from SAP professionals around the world. There are also industry pay breakdowns and pay comparisons between integrators and end customers. Now that Panaya is getting closer to 1,000 respondents for this survey, we can get a pretty good picture from the responses, and look forward to next year’s results for further benchmarking.

If you have any questions based on this analysis, post them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer them.

7 Comments

can you probably do a survey on how SAP guys (their authorised trng partners) are fooling people across to go for certifications (people without relevant SAP exp) and how many amingst them manage to even get the barest possible salaries.

@Susan - Thanks for the heads up, not sure why the right graphic didn't come up but I reloaded it, have a look now, the comparison is interesting. 2010 medians were higher but the gender pay breakdown is ultimately similar.

@Saurabh One golden rule of surveys is that you don't undertake them expecting a particular result. You don't know what kind of feedback you're going to get, sometimes your beliefs are confirmed, sometimes they are not. As part of a group of SAP Mentors self-dubbed "The Certification Five," we actually did conduct one of the largest public surveys on SAP certification last fall. You can check out the results here. I believe more data on SAP certification is still needed, particularly from the customer standpoint in terms of the true value of SAP certification to hiring.

Hey , Jon First of all "great info".
Well I am kind of fresher in SAP i have been working in Technical side (ABAP) since 6 months (Implementation) in IS-utility. My area of duty was creating Reports , Module pool and enhancement and all, conclusively only Hardcore abap. Before coming in to SAP i have knowledge and six months experience of Java too. So what i need to know is in what side of SAP should I go ? What skills should i learn and master for future and Of course for the present as well.

Very good article. The questions now would are,
In 1-10 years experience category, why are women getting a noticeably higher salary, whereas why do men get higher salary in 10+ years category?
In a business better the performance, better is the pay cheque. According to the research outcome, we can infer or cross question in following ways.
Does it mean younger men are less productive than younger women?
If so, Do older women grow less productive and men become more productive as they grow old and get experience?
Also, I agree with you that the gender pay discrepancy is definitely a noticeable a problem in the SAP world, hopefully it is a justifiable reason and not just a business politics.

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In this blog, I will share my assessments of the latest SAP skills and market trends and how SAP professionals can capitalize on ...
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In this blog, I will share my assessments of the latest SAP skills and market trends and how SAP professionals can capitalize on them. The goal is to help readers keep their skills marketable as SAP evolves. I will also address common SAP career questions and dilemmas from blog readers.
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